The Alien’s Obsession by Zoey Draven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

For the next five days and nights, they worked together whenever they could in Kirov’s labs. Of course, her male had other duties to attend, but he still made their project a priority, something she couldn’t tell him just how much she appreciated.

And life was good. She would wake next to Kirov in the mornings, feel his heat and scent wrapped around her in their furs. On the rare occasion she woke before him, she would kiss him awake and then they would spend a leisurely and pleasurable morning in bed. Once they got up, Kirov would work on the kitchen extension he’d already started adding. Sometimes Luxirian males would show up with materials or help her male with installation and while it would still be another week until it was finished, Lainey could already see that it would be beautiful, the kitchen of her dreams.

Afterwards, Kirov would need to attend to his duties as Ambassador and Lainey would usually call up Crystal and Erin or Kate. She’d learned that Erin had finally convinced Bianca to move into the house on the terrace and while Bianca still refused to speak with Lainey, it relieved her that they were out of that windowless room. And with still no news of the stolen Luxirian crystal, it was the best decision for their sanity and mental health.

Lainey had also connected with Cecelia and Taylor, who were enjoying mated life with their Luxirian males. It made Lainey happy, knowing that her friends weren’t that far away, that she could talk with and see them every day.

Kirov returned home shortly after. He would still go over to his father’s house, would still come back distant and frustrated, which took him a while to shake. He still never told her or offered up any information, despite her trying to ask questions.

Then he would take her to the lake after dinner and they would walk the shores for a bit before going to the labs, to resume working on her piano.

Their project steadily came to life. They worked together on the design of the keyboard, debating over different materials and structure. When Lainey had identified all the notes and chords she could by ear from the collection of songs from the Golden Record, they filled in the gaps with synthesized notes. Lainey assigned them their place on her instrument and Kirov logged the information into his Coms.

Then they’d tweaked. With all the notes inside the Coms, Kirov recreated Bach and it sounded perfect. For the other songs, Lainey heard when a synthesized note was slightly off key and Kirov changed it until she was satisfied.

“You remember all this from memory?” he asked her, late on their fifth night, while they were still in the labs.

He wore that same expression she’d often looked at him with. Awe. It pleased her, considering he’d been a little quiet that day, a little distant.

Lainey flushed and told him, “I’ve been playing the piano since I was four. I was classically trained. I played piano more than I did anything else, even sleep. These notes, this music…they are a part of me. So yes, I remember them.”

Lainey was sitting, perched on the table, next to Kirov, who was tinkering with the kind of metal he would create the keys from, weighing them, testing them.

Kirov hesitated but then said softly, “When you saw your Golden Record…you were happy.”

“Music makes me happy,” she said simply in reply.

He went quiet. He’d been doing that throughout the day, even throughout the week, going quiet. Sometimes, she’d catch him just…thinking, the wheels turning in his mind so hard. It was difficult to get his attention when he was like that, but Lainey was patient.

But lately, that silence had started to feel different. It felt…loaded.

“Do I?” Kirov asked suddenly, cocking his head to the side, his fingers stilling over the metal in his hands. “Do I make you happy?”

Lainey froze, blinking, the question catching her off guard. She should be used to it by now. Kirov was always direct. And with the exception of the situation with his father, he was always honest with her…which was perhaps why that situation hurt her as much as it did.

She must’ve hesitated too long because Kirov’s eyes slid away, his shoulders stiffening. The metal key in his hand dropped to the table with a loud clang and he blew out a sharp, frustrated breath.

“Where is this coming from?” she asked softly.

“The selfish part of me,” Kirov started, looking back at her, “worried that if I showed you the Golden Record, you would pull away from me.”

Lainey’s lips parted, her brow furrowing, blinking. “You were thinking of not showing it to me?” she asked slowly.

“I do not know. I do not think I could do that to you,” he confessed. “It was a piece of your home planet. It contained music, something I knew you loved above all else. It had images of your home, of your people, of your world. I worried it would strengthen your resolve to leave Luxiria…to leave me.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, not sure how to feel about his confession, wondering if this was what he’d been thinking about this past week.

“Because I wonder if it matters at all,” he said, frustration seeping into his tone.

“Kirov—”

“I keep thinking of you, at the moment when you heard that music,” he said. “You are beautiful to me, Lani, always…but in that moment, you were…vrax, you were more. Music gave you that happiness. It radiated from you. Here, on Luxiria, you cannot experience music like that. It is something I fear I will never be able to give you. That realization has haunted me since.”

“If you’re asking me if I miss my home, if I miss Earth, of course I do,” Lainey said, both softened and frustrated by his words. “Wouldn’t you?”

But she knew with certainty that if she returned to Earth, she would be changed forever. She would miss Kirov, ache for him too much to be whole again, even with music.

She kept that to herself, however, afraid to speak those words.

It was a truth, a reality for her now that she could never be that person she was on Earth again. Not with everything she’d experienced, everything she’d seen.

Not that I want to be that person again, her mind whispered.

On Earth, before her abduction, she’d been bitter, alone, lashing out at people who tried to get close to her. She’d remained estranged from her parents, even though she’d gone back to music, even though she’d started performing again. After Nadine’s death, the only thing that had kept her going was music. It was the only thing that had given her purpose, as pathetic as it sounded.

And even though she wanted to, she didn’t tell Kirov any of this at that moment. Though her mind screamed at her to confide in him, to soothe his justified worry, her tongue remained tied and tight behind her teeth.

There was still a part of her that wouldn’t give everything to him, she realized. And maybe he’d realized that too. Maybe that was where this was all coming from. He wasn’t a genius for nothing.

And Kirov was a male who deserved everything.

But could she give everything to him, knowing that he held something important from her?

“I would miss Luxiria with every part of my being,” he said finally, softly. His eyes raised to meet hers, intensity shining in them. “But I know, without a single doubt in my mind, that I would give it all up for you.”

Lainey swallowed back a gasp at the certainty in his voice.

“But I also know, without a doubt, that you do not feel the same,” he finished slowly.

“There’s a lot…there’s a lot that we still don’t know about each other, Kirov,” she murmured, desperately scrambling for an excuse. Anything to dismiss those words, which felt wrong coming out of his mouth, which made her feel sick.

He saw right through her excuse, as usual.

“This again,” Kirov bit out, his hands tightening on the edges of the table.

“It’s true!” she exclaimed, her temper rising. “We’ve known each other for what…less than three weeks?”

“What do I not know about you, luxiva?” he growled. “I know everything. Everything important.”

Lainey sucked in a breath. “No, you don’t.”

“Then tell me,” he growled, his voice booming around the room. “Tell me something I do not know.”

“I had a best friend,” Lainey found herself saying, sliding off the table, her anger growing. She didn’t like this situation, didn’t like the way he was pressing her. He was always pressing her, pushing her. “She was like a sister to me, I knew her better than I knew music, and she knew me like the back of her hand. And then she died. And it ripped me apart and I’ve never the same.”

Some of Kirov’s fight drained from his body, his eyes softening ever so slightly, but when he reached for her, she stepped away from his touch. “Luxiva, come here.”

“No,” she said, her hands trembling at their unexpected confrontation. The night had been going so well and suddenly it wasn’t. Why? Why were they doing this now? “Something else you don’t know about me is that I’ve always picked the wrong men because maybe deep down, I knew they wouldn’t last, that I didn’t want them to. My last boyfriend was emotionally abusive and I let that go on longer than I should’ve. And it only took until it got physical for me to leave him.”

Kirov growled, going still. “He hurt you?”

“Yes,” she hissed, tears filling her eyes, emotions assaulting her from all sides. What the hell was happening? “And after him, I never touched another man. Not until you.”

“Luxiva—”

“Something else you don’t know about me,” she continued, still evading his grasp, “is that I haven’t talked to my parents in years.”

Kirov stilled, watching her closely.

“I picked up music on my own,” she admitted. “I touched a piano once when I was four and it was immediate. It was love and I didn’t even know what love was then. But it was my mother who forced me into it. Who made me practice late into the nights, until my hands cramped and my fingers spasmed. It was my mother who signed me up for showcases and performances and took me out of school, even though my grades were failing. It was my mother who once slapped me across the face so hard I heard my ears ring when I refused to go on stage one night when I was twelve. And when my father cheated on her, when he started sleeping with one of my music instructors, with one of the board members at his company, with the nineteen-year-old college girl who lived across the street, my mother would take her pain and anger out on me. But what was worse than the abuse was that she made me hate music. It made me sick to my stomach to touch a piano.”

Lainey realized that she was crying, that her voice was raspy and husky and she was dragging in deep breaths because she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“The moment I turned eighteen, I moved away. I quit piano, threw away everything I’d worked hard for, just to prove she didn’t control me anymore, didn’t own me anymore,” Lainey said. “And it was Nadine, my best friend, who finally encouraged me to take it back up again, who helped me rediscover that love again. When I listen to music, I remember that. I remember her and her support and that’s a part of why it makes me so happy.”

Lainey dashed a tear away from her cheek before crossing her arms, hugging her waist. She looked up at Kirov who was standing just an arm’s length away, but he felt a lot farther. She didn’t know why she’d told him those things, all at once, but they’d exploded once she’d started and she hadn’t been able to stop.

But she didn’t like to be pushed. He knew that. Perhaps that was why he’d done it.

“So my point is,” she continued softly, “that no…you don’t know ‘everything important’ about me.”

“Lani—”

“And it doesn’t feel nice to be left in the dark, does it, Kirov?”

She held his eyes as she said it and watched his jaw tighten at her unspoken message. She’d stopped asking about his father because there was only so much rejection she would take before she learned to keep her mouth shut.

Kirov was silent, the lab completely quiet. The conversation had started out innocent enough, but had ended in a much different place. But Lainey felt like it needed to be said.

Lainey waited for him to speak, to say anything really.

Say something, she pleaded in her mind. Hold me, tell me you love me, trust me, confide in me about your father.

But he never did. He never did any of those things.

The old Lainey would’ve lashed out at him then. Would’ve tried to push him away, to hurt him…simply because she felt vulnerable.

Now, however, she had no desire to do that. Not to Kirov. She wanted to be better for him. She didn’t want to be the old Lainey.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, fresh tears continuing to fall from her eyes. “I’m sorry I haven’t told you these things until now, Kirov. But you keep things from me too. I’ve tried to act like it doesn’t hurt, but it does. And until we’re more honest with each other, until we can trust each other with these things…I just don’t know where we stand. You’re asking me to give up everything I’ve known for you, you want me to bond myself to you during the ravraxia, but you won’t even introduce me to your father. Don’t you realize how that makes me feel?”

Kirov flinched, turning away, running a hand over his horn in frustration.

Until they sorted their shit out, until they were open with one another…she didn’t know if they could have a future.

That realization hurt worst of all.

“You do not understand,” he finally said.

“Then make me understand, Kirov,” she pleaded. “Please.”

She waited. And waited.

But he remained silent.

Finally, he said, “It is late. We should return to the dwelling now.”

Feeling deflated, emotionally raw, vulnerable, Lainey’s shoulders sagged.

And for the rest of the night, she couldn’t quite meet his eyes.